Most of this is moot to me I suppose. I don’t sub out work for the most part and I don’t work as a sub. Any time I have been subbed out, it was usually for pennies on the dollar.
Here’s what I find ironic tho - if we started losing our accounts to someone charging half of our rates, we would be upset. The nefarious ‘Bucket Bob’ is killing us! How does he survive? Why is he killing our market?
No one is happy when getting cut in half unless…he’s our sub and only making the same half and we keep the rest. He’s a Bucket bob loser if he’s doing it on his own…but he’s our favorite subcontractor and we love him when he’s working for us.
That makes no sense. A sub is not on the same level as the business owner. He doesn’t hold the same value as the business owner in the transaction of the sale.
I think you are still looking at it from a general contractor perspective.
With a GC I am going discharge him full price and he is going to add the cost of his services (GC) to the final bill to the consumer. The consumer understands they are paying for the window cleaning and in addition to that my services.
With a window cleaner who subs for a window cleaning business owner the consumer is expecting to pay for the cost of window cleaning with no mark up. The consumer is slipping the GC and going straight to the window cleaning company. The sub in this situation is filling the role of the laborer.
This is where the issue is. Those who are demanding 70 percent still see their value as being greater than filling the role of laborer plus job cost expense. Don’t be business owner that’s their value. The business owner has to compare the option of using an employee vs a sub for his labor. So he has to compare what the sub will cost vs what he has to pay him and compare that to what he is paying his employee. To the business owner theirnfilling the same role.
The sub may value himself more but to the business owner he is only filling the role of the labor portion of his transaction.
Sub to company vs sub to GC is a different relationship. They are not the same. With a GC he is hiring a company to over see the window cleaning portion of the job. He is not just looking to fill a labor role.
Good day everyone, I started in this window washing industry having jobs subbed out to me from construction clean up contracts but I have always been given the opportunity to bid on the job either in person, pictures and/or drawings.
I also make sure I state that the estimate is based on pictures and/or drawings just in case when I show up there are windows that were not included in the pictures/drawings I received from contractor.
